Israeli soldiers man a roadblock at the entrance to the Israeli colony of Itamar, near the West Bank town of Nablus, early Saturday 12 March 2011. (AP)
Israeli troops were on Saturday hunting for a Palestinian who killed five members of an Israeli settler family at their West Bank colony overnight, officials and reports said Saturday.
An Israeli army spokeswoman told AFP the Palestinian had entered Itamar settlement near Nablus in the north of the West Bank and killed five people, but did not elaborate on the victims' identities.
Israeli media sources said that a family of five were stabbed to death in their beds and included a baby girl, two children aged three and 11 years old, and their parents.
Three other children managed to escape and raise the alarm, Ynet reported.
One paramedic at the scene told Ynet that one of the children still had a pulse when they arrived, but that they had been unable to resuscitate him.
Israeli forces had launched a search of the area to find the attacker or attackers, said the army spokeswoman.
An AFP photographer noted the military had sealed off all roads in the district with checkpoints, and that Itamar residents had been told to stay at home.
Palestinian security sources told AFP that Israeli soldiers in jeeps had deployed in the sector, sending ambulances to the scene, and said an army helicopter was flying over the area of the attack.
Tensions between Palestinians and Israeli's colonizing in the area have been extremely high in recent days.
The Itmar colony is known to harbor some of the most extremist settlers.
On Monday, Israeli soldiers fired live rounds at Palestinians after they clashed with Israeli settlers near Nablus.
Ten Palestinians and an Israeli settler were wounded during the violence, according to Palestinian medical sources and a spokesman for the settlers.
A week earlier, following scruffles with Israeli police, settlers firebombed a house in Huwarra village, which saw two Palestinian children taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.
They also smashed up shops and cars in the southern city of Hebron and settlers also cut down 500 olive tree saplings, a practice quite common near settler colonies.
The settlers routinely react when police and soldiers demolish structures in settlements or wildcat settlement outposts in what are known as "price tag" attacks, which almost always target Palestinians.
This violence against the indiginous population is common and claims to counter what the settlers refer to as "anti-settler" activity by the Israeli government.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday told hardline settlers that such attacks were unacceptable.
The international community considers Israeli settlements built in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as illegal, and 14 of the 15 members of the UN Security Council last month backed a resolution condemning the Israeli entity for continuing settlement activity.
The United States vetoed the resolution, saying it did not think the United Nations was the appropriate forum to address the issue, but noted its opposition to Israeli settlement building.
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